The Courier

Thank you for those of you who sent in photos from the Big Garden Birdwatch at the weekend.  Please do look through the photos in the gallery.

On Wednesday evening the Ornithology Club crunched all the data from the school birdwatching activities and the results in the photos. The most recorded birds were magpies (76), followed by blackbirds (63) and then pigeons (61).

Our current English topic is Persuasive Writing, and 4M have been researching three important questions: Why are rainforests important? Why are they being destroyed? What can we do to save them? We have read some thought-provoking books to help us understand these issues, and the children have created some eye-catching and informative posters. A selection of the posters is here, and they have made a wonderful display. Well done, 4M!

We are learning about different saints in RE and last week we discovered Saint Macarius of Alexandria who is the patron Saint of Sweets and Cooks. After reading his story of how he sold his bakery business before becoming a monk, we ate prayer cookies!

Each bit of the cookie represented a short prayer about what we were thankful for, something we wanted to say sorry for and another to ask God for.

A simple but effective way of planning our prayers.

Class 6W became commentators this week. They have been revising the function of adverbs, then using them to commentate on a Quidditch match.  After this, they analysed their writing, sorting the adverbs they had used into the three categories of how, when and where, evaluating whether they had a good range and if they should add some more.

We had a very busy and successful forest school again this week with lots of imagination flowing. There were some willow wisps available for the children to craft with. Some of them made fabulous willow crowns and a few attempted to make willow wands. One of the children thought they had found a badger sett so the whole class ran to look. We have been learning about badgers in the classroom so it was lovely to see the connections with learning and the natural world.

The dinosaur dig site was in operation again this week and they found a broken pipe and ‘the knee of a thesaurus’. What cracking finds! Some of the children decided that they needed a tent over the dig site to protect it from the elements, so they worked together as a small team to build one with great success.

We have also got a bit braver this week and some children were holding a large worm, without any gloves on. They were extra careful with the worm and put him back near his home when they were done.

‘Blueberry trees’ were planted in the area by a child. She was looking after the environment and trying to feed future birds and insects. We also had witches and wizards around the site, using the wands to put spells on to their friends. At the end of the session, one of the children found ‘stick man’ and he joined us all for reflection time. We are all looking forward to next week.